Arts Celebration: Being a Goal Setter

Rehearsals are in full swing, creativity is switched on and the character strengths of teamwork, perseverance, bravery, and kindness (to others and to ourselves) are being practised daily.

We have dreamed ideas, created our soundscapes, are sorting costumes and it's all go, go, go. We are feeling excited, a little bit worried at times but we know that, together, we can do this.

Being a Goal Setter means that:

• I can reflect on my learning  
• I can share and discuss my achievements  
• I can plan my next learning steps

For some of us, performing is a challenge and playing music is very new, but we know that it's helping our brains to grow and we are setting ourselves small goals so we can improve every day. It could be: noticing when we need to improve our timing or be ready to get started, use a strong voice or keep to the beat as we play. We know that practice will help achieve our goals.

There are so many new skills to learn.

Whānau Teamwork Works of Art

Every week Autahi and Tautoru get together to learn about the character strengths and to practise them in hands on activities. For the last couple of weeks, we have been learning about and practising Teamwork. We have found out that Teamwork...

Looks like:

• Me helping my team. 
• Think of what else we could do to solve problems.
• Being helpful by sharing ideas.
• Helping each other
• Listening to each other’s ideas
• Working together - sharing ideas, sharing equipment
• Supporting others and helping them think of ideas
• Stick together
• Everyone taking part and helping
• Taking turns
• Using kind hands

Sounds like:

• Talking to each other - using kind words
• Hear lots of ideas
• Sharing ideas
• Compliment - tell them what you think
• Problem-solving
• Asking Questions
• Laughing
• Encouragement 
• Building onto ideas
• People sharing ideas.
• People communicating/talking.
• People making suggestions.
• Kind words- thanks, manners.
• People talking.
• People asking for help.

On Friday we got together in our junior whānau groups to create a Teamwork art piece and practise using the different elements of teamwork. Whānau groups did different art projects throughout our spaces. Here are some of the groups doing their Teamwork Art.

Arts Celebration Preparation.

We hope you have popped Wednesday 22nd and Thursday 23rd August in your diaries, so that you remember to come and check out what we have all been creating connected to music, dance and drama.


This week we started making some musical instruments. We collected boxes, cans, containers, bottles, rubber bands, paper plates, shells, bottle tops, etc and used our creativity and perseverance to make an instrument that we can play.



It was serious business! Plenty of concentration and teamwork going on here. Come along and hear what sort of sounds these instrument make.

Division

This week in Maths we pretended to be pirates, who had found a treasure chest filled with gold. We worked out there were 30 pieces of gold and then we had to divide them up between the pirates. We had to make sure that all the pirates got the same amount, because you know what pirates do when they are not happy! We didn't want any fighting on our pirate ship, or anyone to have to walk the plank!

So if there were two pirates they would both get 15 pieces of treasure. We knew using doubles that 15+15=30, and using halves that 30-15=15 and by equal sharing the gold in groups of five, each pirate would get 3 bundles of 5 and that was 15.

Have a look at how many pieces of gold each pirate would get if there were ten pirates!

We are working hard to grow our Maths brain, because everyone can be good at Maths if they keep trying.

Friday Whanau Groups

Today we started our Friday Whanau Groups. We will be spending 20 minutes in our Whanau Groups every two weeks, after assembly. This week we focussed on writing. We shared some writing with each other and asked each other questions about our writing. It is really great to work with buddies across the school!

Positive Accomplishment through Goal Setting

Our Learner Attribute this term is “I am a Goal Setter”. We have been talking about what that means to us and identifying some new learning goals.

Setting goals is an important aspect of Positive Accomplishment - goals enable us to have a clear direction in life, providing us with a sense of purpose. Setting and accomplishing a challenging and worthwhile goal also leads to Positive Emotions, which we know has a positive impact on our wellbeing too!

As outlined by Norrish, J., Robinson, J. & Williams, P. (2011), Positive Accomplishment involves the capacity to work towards meaningful goals and the motivation to persist despite challenges and setbacks (Growth Mindset).

Knowing how to persist and persevere when faced with a challenge helps us to develop resilience, which will help us tackle obstacles that may pop up later on in life. 

Today we had our first 'Whanau Sharing' opportunity where we got to share our writing goals and pieces of work we were proud of with an older/younger buddy. 

 

It was great to receive feedbak from our buddies and get to share in their learning goals and successes too. Look at how awesome we were at listening to each other and taking turns to share out work!!

 

 

 



In a few weeks time we will have Student Led Conferences where we get to share our goals with you (the parents) and fill you in on how we are progressing towards all our learning goals. Keep an eye out on the Newsletter for further details.

                      

Exploring Language Features through Poetry

We have been learning about various language features we can use in our writing to create a more interesting piece for our readers. What better way to explore this concept through writing poetry!

Last week we explored similes and metaphors and used our senses to create a Winter poem. They were just beautiful! We also made some art to go with out published piece.

 

 

This week we have been creative with alliteration and onomatopoeia to write a Sound poem!

To create our poem we got into groups of 8. Each group broke into 2 smaller groups and came up with 4 lines each around our 'topic'. Then we came together to collaborate on our final piece of poetry. We used teamwork, fairness and perspective to 're-shape' and combine our sound poems, incorporating everyone's ideas.

We are so pleased with the final results! Here are some of them below.